Fountain of Peace

Water is essentially a renewable resource that regulates itself. Nevertheless, the global hydrologic cycle, a kind of natural recycling system, is already strained. In many places water is no longer available in sufficient amounts and quality and a third of the world’s population has insufficient access to water. This is due to an increasing demand on the one hand and a decline in the available resources on the other. Global population growth and improved standards of living are also feeding global demand. In parallel, the available resources are decreasing due not only to non-sustainable resource management and ongoing environmental pollution, but also to the consequences of climate change, such as rising global temperatures and changes in precipitation.

Around 1.1 billion people throughout the world today lack sufficient access to drinking water, and approx. 2.6 billion do not have enough water to meet basic sanitary needs. In order to remedy this situation, the United Nations has included a water-related target in its Millennium Development Goals: to halve by 2015 the number of people without access to water. Since the consequences of insufficient access to water go far beyond those of inadequate drinking water supplies, this issue plays a central role in nearly all the millennium goals and is implicated in a number of additional policy fields. These include public health, food production, education and gender justice. Furthermore, water scarcity is not only linked to issues such as energy supply, environmental protection, the preservation of biodiversity, and the problem of expanding deserts, but it also slows down the economic development of states.

Preventing Escalation

What is true of other resources is also true of water: the scarcer it becomes and the fiercer the competition between users, the greater the danger of conflicts – and possibly of violence. An important question is whether and under what conditions water shortages can lead to violence and how escalations can be prevented. Since different actors and parties can be involved in the conflicts, different constellations emerge: at an international level, states fight over the use of joint water resources, while at the national and local levels, different users of water compete for their quotas.

Depending on the type of conflict, different measures are necessary to avoid a violent escalation. Along the lines of imminent wars over oil and gas, in the 1990s it was believed that violent conflicts over water were also inevitable. However, many studies have since demonstrated the lack of an empirical basis for such scenarios.¹ While it is true that water can spark additional tensions in troubled relations, it is just one factor among many and is not the sole cause or trigger of violent conflict. One important reason is that the cost of fighting a war is much higher than the cost of processing plants or purchasing additional water on the world market. Moreover, it is difficult to maintain control of cross-border water resources by military means, as this requires a de-facto occupation of a country.

When faced with conflicts over water, most states prefer cooperation over confrontation. If, under cooperative arrangements, one state withdraws water from crossborder resources such as rivers, lakes, or subterranean reservoirs, this does not necessarily lead to an absolute reduction of the available water at the expense of other states. Ideally, all participants profit. Through shared resource management, the total amount of available water can even be increased. The cooperative potential is so great that water treaties over water have been signed and maintained despite existing territorial conflicts. An excellent example is the 1960 Indus Treaty between Pakistan and India, which today continues to regulate the use of the Indus and its tributaries. In effect, the treaty grants Pakistan the right to use the Indus's western tributaries while India controls the tributaries in the east. Such cooperative agreements on water can serve as a starting point for greater rapprochement between hostile parties, and they demonstrate that water policy can act as a catalyst and ideally contribute to easing tensions between states.

Enough to Go Around

Even if the thesis of interstate water wars has proved wrong so far, there is an obvious connection between water scarcity and intrastate conflicts. Poor-quality water has, for instance, caused health problems in Central Asia, which in turn have contributed to social unrest. When a water shortage is the direct cause of a conflict, it can lead to competition between different sectors (agriculture, industry, and households), between urban and rural areas, and between different social classes. Furthermore, violent struggles often break out along ethnic and geographical lines, as in the clashes between nomadic cattle breeders and sedentary farmers in northern Kenya or in the war in Darfur. Finally, water shortages can indirectly contribute to conflicts by triggering migration movements that increase the strain on water resources at the migrants’ new destination.

Although there is often talk of a global water crisis, enough water exists in absolute terms to supply the entire population of the world. Water shortages result from unequally distributed regional resources. There are only a few regions in the world today—including the Sahel, the Middle East, and parts of Asia—that suffer from a physical scarcity of water, also known as a hydrological shortage. In most cases the reasons for the shortage are economic. In other words, inadequate financial or institutional capacities have made it impossible to increase supplies through the usual methods: tapping new sources, employing efficient technologies, or reprocessing water. Shortages primarily occur in developing countries—often in weak states that lack the capacities to take effective measures. These states’ stability is additionally jeopardized by intrastate conflicts associated with these water shortages.

Learning to Cope

Since water shortages are mainly a problem of distribution and management, they require political solutions. As in the case of Pakistan and India, it can be helpful to treat water distribution as a functional rather than a political issue when conflicts arise between states. However, the only way to wage an effective, large-scale battle against the global water crisis is politically—through global water governance. In order to pursue an effective water policy, basic legal conditions and institutional capacities must be created at all levels: international, national, regional, and local. They must guarantee the fair and sustainable management of water resources and coordinate the practical measures that are introduced at the different levels.

A sustainable concept for coping with water shortages is already available in the form of the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), which also provides the working base for the UN. However, institutional and implementation problems have kept it from being introduced on a large scale. Furthermore, the process must incorporate all the relevant players—not only UN agencies, regional organizations, nation-states, and state-owned companies, but also the private sector, NGOs, community-level organizations, the academic community, and water users. In the past, water scarcity was mainly seen as a technical challenge and a task for engineers, but it is now understood as a political challenge and part of global environmental policy and sustainable development.

Various measures are available to defuse looming conflicts. It is urgent that the 1997 UN Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses be put into effect at an international level in order to create a valid global framework for the use of cross-border waterways. Only 16 of the required 35 states have ratified it so far. In addition, cooperative structures must be built and strengthened at the regional and international levels, including interstate agreements and shared institutions for the management of cross-border water resources. A first practical trust-building measure could be the exchange of data and information on water sources. Even in crisis regions, this could facilitate additional common projects such as the construction of dams in river headwaters in order to control water flows, protect all riparian states against storm-related floods, and generate electricity. Regulating water flow could also increase the amount of available water. At a national level, water could be saved by legally regulating irrigation in agriculture or by making investments in deteriorated infrastructure. Small loans and subsidies could also be used to finance more efficient irrigation systems. At the same time, governments must guarantee water supplies for poorer social classes. For instance, targeted consumer subsidies have proved an effective policy tool in South Africa.

Water scarcity needs political answers. The only way to close the existing institutional and implementation gap, particularly with regard to the Millennium Development Goals, is to create a global water governance architecture that not only integrates all players but also combines the different-level measures in a coherent, effective water policy. As is the case with climate policy, awareness must be raised that a sustainable water resource policy protects a global public good.

¹For example: Aaron T. Wolf, Shira B. Yoffe and Mark Giordano, “International Waters—Identifying Basins at Risk,” Water Policy (May 2003).